In an all-Bernstein programme, Nicola Benedetti enthralls in Symposium, the Baltimore Symphony’s percussionists strut their stuff in the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Marin Alsop introduces us to rarities. A true birthday treat.

In true Olympian spirit, Marin Alsop and her São Paulo Symphony Orchestra dived head first into the drama of Brazilian music, with luxurious Rachmaninov and Gabriela Montero freely expressive in Grieg.

Marin Alsop led the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening in the New York première of Kevin Puts and James Bartolomeo’s The City and a valiantly led execution of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

On the final night of their mammoth European tour, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra played a brilliantly energetic programme to a delighted Bridgewater Hall audience. There was a great deal to commend in the playing, despite some capricious tempo choices in Mahler’s first symphony.

There is a tendency in the reviews of Marin Alsop to start by mentioning the obvious; that is, she is the first female conductor to have conducted the last night of the Proms and that she is the first female Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. So let me start with the surprising: that Alsop is Irish.

On Friday, 25 October, the São Paulo Symphony presented an energetic and polished performance at the Southbank Centre. Part of the “The Rest is Noise Festival” focused on 20th century music, this programme took the turbulent 1960s as its theme.

The Last Night of the Proms provided a welcome tying-up of the various strands that have permeated this year’s season: British light music, the 60th anniversary of the Coronation, a host of premières and new BBC commissions, and the significant anniversaries of a number of composers (including the big-hitters of the season, Wagner and Britten).

Who says life isn’t a dress rehearsal? Saturday night at the Proms was just that for New York-born Marin Alsop, for when she returns to the Royal Albert Hall in two weeks’ time she will make Proms history as the first female conductor to preside over the Last Night.

It’s Richard Wagner’s bicentennial year, and everyone is getting in on the act. 22 different productions, by one count, of the complete Ring cycle will be seen worldwide, not to mention countless other celebratory evenings put on by sundry ensembles.

If there was any sense that the Marin Alsop was at the end of a particularly harried week for her, she displayed no signs of it at her “Casual Friday” concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Friday 2 November. The Baltimore-based conductor found herself at the center of the headlines last week – albeit for reasons she probably would have preferred to have passed up on.

Five years on from her historic appointment as the first woman to head a major American orchestra, Marin Alsop took to the stage of Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley Friday night with a swagger, leading the impressive Baltimore Symphony, the orchestra with whom she has made her mark as one of the world’s leading conductors.

The short life and terrifying death of Joan of Arc are the subject of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake"), a curious masterpiece of an oratorio dating from 1938. The nearly-forgotten work received a well-deserved resurrection by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night.

When death takes away everyone you ever loved, acting cool and staying amiable might not be the easiest things to do. You start having thoughts you never dared think before. You start questioning the unquestionable. Chances are you will turn into an agnostic. Giuseppe Verdi did.

A powerful voice in classical music, American conductor Marin Alsop, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, challenged audiences at the Royal Festival to engage with contemporary classical music in an imaginative way.